Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Fearlessly, Lash submitted a chronology of his life thus far. In 1929 he had joined Norman Thomas’s Socialist Party. Then he had gone to Spain to fight for the Loyalists—and resigned from the Socialist Party because of all he had witnessed there. Yes, he still blamed the “profit system” for many domestic problems and did not consider it “disloyal” to favor changes in an unjust economic system.

  Someone on the committee accused Lash of having been a poor soldier during the Spanish Civil War because he could not sing in tune or keep in step. Resentful, Lash burst into song with gusto:

  If you see an un-American lurking

  far or near,

  Just alkalize with Martin Dies and

  he will disappear.

  The New York Times summed up the scene: “The Dies committee heard words and music today, while Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt looked on with manifest amusement as Joseph Lash warbled.”

  As she listened to Lash’s spirited testimony, ER was impressed by his directness and interested in his occasional discomfort; she felt her faith in the young man was vindicated.

  ER’s young friends had been subjected to contemptuous vitriol by congressmen and reporters and had done well. But her commitment to youth, and her personal admiration, were now focused upon Lash, who seemed such a needful, earnest, and genuinely good young man. In fact, their meeting during the Dies Committee hearings marked the beginning of one of the most important friendships in her life.

  On 6 December Lash wrote to thank ER for “your great kindness to me last week. I know that you have not wanted to stir up another hornets nest by befriending the ASU. And so I am all the more grateful for your appearance . . . when I testified. I regret that I did not do a better job. When one’s political opinions are in a violent state of flux, one should go to a hermitage rather than before a Congressional Committee with its thousand tongues.”

  ER replied, “I appreciate your note very much and was very glad to go to the Dies Committee hearing when you testified. I had a feeling that your political opinions were not completely clarified, but I think on the whole you did a pretty good job. If you ever feel that you would like to see me and talk over things, either in New York or here [Washington], I shall be glad to have you come either alone or bring any one you want with you.”

  Perhaps it was Lash’s integrity—his concern for his former friends, now his opponents, as well as for the future—that stirred ER deeply. Perhaps it was simply that they agreed profoundly on issues, while so many other young people she had trusted, daughters and sons of friends, and other AYC members, now disappointed her. He had renewed her faith in youth and in its potential both to spark change and to stay committed to one’s ideals.

  After the Dies Committee hearings, various politicians who agreed with its approach attacked ER personally for her appearance at the hearing. A group of Republican women assailed her presence as “horrifying” and “indecent.” The borough president of Queens, George Harvey, declared that AYC members should be sent to concentration camps, yet the first lady had had them for tea at the White House. Harvey said he did not believe in “free speech for Reds” because they stood for “sedition, treason, rebellion.” He would not let a Red speak anywhere in Queens, and he was relieved that many of the city colleges and universities now banned them as well.

  But others applauded ER’s determination to defend America’s civil liberties during the growing witch-hunt atmosphere. In 1939 America’s political climate was as discordant and divided as any in Europe, becoming ever more accusatory and dangerous, filled with wild, threatening rhetoric and laced with occasional acts of random, sickening racial and labor violence. In that atmosphere, ER’s support for her much-maligned friends seemed to many a reflection of her valor and steadfast decency. She called for calm, discernment, and especially the survival of democratic values. Civil liberties meant very little unless they prevailed during moments of war and tension, when disagreements were most sharply revealed.

  The Nazi-Soviet Pact was a double-edged sword. It cut liberal-left united front alliances to shreds. New Deal liberals were stunned to see their former radical allies fall supine before Soviet aggression in Poland and Finland. The pact drove Communists into a new and strange union with isolationists, Nazi sympathizers, and anti–New Deal Republicans. Communists could now be attacked as Red Nazis.

  As the 1940 presidential race neared, the New Deal agenda hung suspended by the twisted cross of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. FDR initiated a bipartisan campaign for war preparation, emphasizing a massive air and fleet buildup that required industry’s cooperation and participation, but he turned away from efforts to further the New Deal. Liberals were on the defensive, and activist New Dealers were confused, able only to wait for him to renew his commitment to their primary goals of job security, housing, education, and public health. Moreover, when FDR’s Justice Department began to compete with the Dies Committee in its crusade against Communists, the civil liberties record of the Roosevelt administration went virtually to smash. Loyalty oaths for federal workers were introduced in the Relief Act of 1939.

  For months after the Dies Committee hearings, ER defended the AYC in speeches, in columns, and in replies to citizens’ critical letters. Her most earnest letters went to her closest friends, who were concerned about her reputation and worried about her judgment.

  On 2 December she appealed to Baruch for a long-range financial aid package for the AYC. Baruch still disliked the tone used by the AYC leadership, regretted many of its actions, and never believed it was all that the first lady thought it was. And he defended the Dies Committee, saying, “no harm comes from these investigations if we get the truth.” He would not give the AYC a long-term commitment, but he gave it the money she requested to pay its rent and other bills, and he assured ER in a handwritten postscript to his letter of firm disagreement: “Please always be frank with me. We shall always be friends—as I have enlisted with you.”

  In Philadelphia on 4 December, ER accepted the AFSC Humanitarian Award, presented by Curtis Bok, before an audience of more than a thousand Quakers, philanthropists, and citizens. Referring to the Dies Committee, she said that America owed to “all groups trying to solve their problems our sympathetic interest and attention. I doubt if putting them in a category, and trying to decide if this or that group is dangerous, will help solve their problems.” To the Quakers, she expressed her gratitude for the teaching she had received from them over the years: “It is an education to work with people who have ideals and live up to them, but are practical enough to make their ideals become realities.”

  During these weeks of turmoil, ER hosted an evening of frolic and fun at the annual Gridiron Widows Party at the White House. She was particularly pleased that her great friends Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read would join her for the event and spend the night. Lape and a group of physicians had been campaigning for a national health care program, initially to have been part of the 1935 Social Security Act. Lape had asked ER to arrange a meeting with FDR, and after several postponements, ER wrote Lape that FDR “says that he does not want to get into any difficulty with the American Medical Association just now when he has so much to contend with.” Lape tore the letter in half and crumpled it. ER was relieved that Lape came to the White House party anyway. She and Lape were both determined to keep agitating for a national health care program.

  Lape and Read thoroughly enjoyed themselves that evening, especially during ER’s star performance in an off-the-record skit, accompanied by Elinor Morgenthau, Bess Furman, Tommy, and Edith Helm. The theme of the evening was a Wild West “whoopee 1940 roundup,” filled with journalistas strutting their stuff for the first lady. According to press reports, all the skits, songs, and supper speeches were amusing. A jolly array of potential presidential wives were serenaded. The ER character was given the first and last song. The message of the first was that the Roosevelts were on their way out:

  I’m wait
ing for the ’40 roundup.

  Gonna saddle old Frank for the last time.

  So long, old gals. I’ll ride in on

  “My Day”. . . .

  Git along, little Frankie, git along.

  But in the “grand finale,” the situation changed: the Roosevelts were here to stay.

  Oh, give me my home,

  Where the New Dealers roam,

  And the Congressmen vote as they may.

  Where never is heard an encouraging word.

  And the press keeps on printing “My Day.”

  “We all had a pleasant time,” ER noted, “laughed at our own peculiarities as shown in the skits,” and thoroughly enjoyed the monologues. The next day she and her guests were entertained by a repeat performance of the Gridiron Clubists. “They were so proud of their songs, they invited their excluded wives and women colleagues.” The men, aided by show business professionals Moss Hart and Max Gordon, addressed a giant sphinx with FDR’s face and cigarette holder, with “Is He or Ain’t He?”

  Will you run?

  Or are you done?

  Will you be eternally the one?

  Music was a great solace for ER. Planning the Christmas festivities, she included many concert artists from Europe and noted that “we have developed a little in the past 25 years.” We no longer banish, as we did during the Great War, “music by composers who happened to be of this or that nationality. . . . The one thing which is above war, is art. We can still enjoy music and pictures and theatres and books, no matter what the nationality of the artist may be.”

  In mid-December ER devoted a column to the 148th anniversary of the Bill of Rights: “I hope that every citizen in this country will read over those first ten amendments to the Constitution and keep them constantly in mind, particularly Articles IV, V, and VI.” Article VI guarantees criminals being prosecuted

  certain rights. I am wondering if in the present day these rights should not be observed for all people, whether accused in a criminal case or whether merely accused through the public press. It seems to me that “the right to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense,” would be a safeguard to a great many people today who find themselves suddenly held up as dangerous citizens when they have not had an opportunity to be heard.

  If you are not accused of being a Communist these days, you may be a Communist front and now you may be a Communist transmission belt. . . . I do not question that all three . . . exist, but I begin to wonder whether some perfectly innocent people may not be suffering because of the fears which are being aroused.

  That same month, J. B. Matthews issued a blast against several consumer groups that ER had long been part of, including the League of Women Shoppers and the National Consumers League. Created to protect the health and safety of citizens, to keep poisons out of food and drugs, these groups were charged now by Matthews with being Communist “transmission belts.”

  At a press conference, FDR censured the committee’s procedures, and ER “joined the President today in criticizing” the report. In its coverage, the New York Times quoted most of her Bill of Rights column. An illustrious group of educators, scientists, writers, and artists, including the novelists Dashiell Hammett and Theodore Dreiser and the anthropologist Franz Boas, joined ER to defend the Bill of Rights. The notables spoke with alarm of a “growing witch hunt” in the Dies Committee’s efforts to suppress dissident groups. “We have before us the example of many European countries where suppression of the Communist Party was but a beginning, followed by a campaign against trade unions, cultural groups, Jews, Catholics, Masons, and ending with the destruction of all freedom.”

  Matthews’s attack on consumer groups was followed by his promise to investigate the influence of “Reds” in schools and teachers’ unions, then move on to “the domination of un-Americanism in Hollywood.” ER considered his Gestapo-like assaults to be the real menace. She was outraged that Congress emphasized the Dies investigations instead of examining the causes of poverty and unemployment. The real problem that faced America, she insisted, was that four million young people were out of school and out of work. Until something was done to find them jobs, they would be “a potential menace to their communities.” Work, she emphasized, was “the number one problem confronting youth.” Many colleges and high schools failed to prepare their students for meaningful work. She received countless letters from graduates who wrote, “We have nothing to sell. We are not [trained] to do a single thing. Please, Mrs. Roosevelt, what shall we do?” ER called for a business-industrial-educational alliance that would actually serve the needs of the nation, and the community.

  Many Americans who had found gainful employment in the WPA had recently been laid off because of new regulations that severely limited the best training and job projects. A woman who had been with WPA for four years, but was now back on relief, wrote to ER of the loss of “personal pride and self esteem sacred to the individual.” Mindful of the outbreak of war in Europe, she concluded, “The long-time tragedies of peace may be more devastating, if allowed to continue, than those of war. . . . Until democratic society can find a dignified use for all the individuals who comprise it, there can be no peace.” ER agreed completely: “In a really successful democracy, those who want work should find work.”

  In New York City to deliver a town hall lecture, “On the Problems of American Youth,” ER met with Joe Lash at her Eleventh Street apartment. They had corresponded since the Dies Committee hearings, and she sensed that he was “in trouble.” She had invited him to visit and discuss his difficulties in the ASU. Lash explained that the Communists now dominated and that he and his allies, including Molly Yard (the ASU’s “independent-minded chair”), Agnes Reynolds, and Jimmy Wechsler, were in the minority.

  ER replied that he was “not the only one having troubles with Communists” and showed him a recent Daily Worker attack on her: “Mrs. Roosevelt has it down to a science. She manages to ‘defend’ such progressive organizations as the American Youth Congress and to slap the Dies Committee, and at the same time to rail against Communists as ‘foreign agents’ . . . [She] is playing a very sinister and crafty game [and her aim is to] make it easier for the administration to sneak America into war.”

  Lash replied, “The Communists know that you rather than the Dies Committee are their most dangerous foe.”

  During this early meeting in their burgeoning friendship, Joe Lash took notes, as he would always do. When Lash said he and Molly Yard intended to leave the ASU, ER was concerned. She wondered about his future, suggested they meet again, and invited him to use her place at Hyde Park to rest, reflect, and restore his energies. Their relationship, defined by their shared quest for a better future, was launched.

  After her town hall lecture, which was attended by over two thousand young people, ER left for Hyde Park for the holiday season. The next day Anna and her family arrived by train from Seattle, and ER noted their relaxed manner. “I think my daughter must have done a very remarkable piece of work,” ER told her readers, “for everybody including the father . . . and the baby looked well and cheerful. My recollection of traveling with babies is a succession of difficulties. The food was never right, they wouldn’t sleep when they should and altogether a twenty-four hour trip seemed endless. This family, after four days of travel, seemed rested and well and, wonder of wonders, entirely good humored. It is evident to me that each generation improves upon the last!”

  ER’s holiday was festive and prayerful. Social events, films and escapades, and snow-filled frolics with four generations of family filled her days. From Hyde Park to the White House, it was a time of harmony. Private moments in New York City and quiet dinners with special friends—including ER’s annual holiday dinner with Hick—brought respite from he
r busy social calendar.

  ER and Hick had not spent significant time together in recent months. Although they wrote and called regularly, Hick missed her exclusive time with ER. One morning she was relieved to hear ER’s voice: “I needed reassurance! I had wakened at 6, moaning and covered with a cold perspiration, dreaming you had died! . . . It would be so much better, wouldn’t it, if I didn’t love you so much! It makes it trying for you. You are very sweet to me always.” Still, Hick wrote to congratulate ER for an award as “leading statesman of the week” and for “standing by the AYC. . . . I’m darned proud of you.” She recalled their time alone in the country as “two perfect weeks. . . . I cant remember having had a happier time on a vacation—except that time you and I drove around the Gaspe Peninsula. We DID have a good time on that trip, didn’t we?” Hick let ER know that if she could not be alone with ER, she preferred to be alone.

  She had even refused to attend the Gridiron Widows Party. “It’s sweet of you to invite me down,” she wrote, “but I think I’d better sit tight financially.” It was not only travel expenses, “but I’d have to get my evening things out, have them pressed, etc.” Yet in the same letter she described all she purchased with “the money you gave me for my vacation.” In addition to paying many bills, she had bought “new corduroy breeches and hunting boots” and felt “all dressed up” as she wrote her letter: “Gee I love clothes like these.” ER, always conscious that her schedule and obligations kept her from spending time with Hick, compensated by being sympathetic and as loving as possible. Their ongoing correspondence shows their continued affection for and trust in each other.

  ER hated to be alone and was happiest when she was busy and her homes were filled, especially with young people. Soon after the Dies Committee hearings, when she hosted the AYC delegation, she wrote Hick that it seemed “funny not to have the house full of young people!”